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Discover how our company prioritizes continuity through our independence, self-financing, cash management, insurance policies, talent oversight, compliance, backup strategies, business development, risk assessment, governance, and crisis management. Our proactive approach builds confidence and ensures resilience.
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Our continuity policy Reviewed and revised: June 2019
Foundations (I): independence We don’t have any external shareholders. So we don’t have anyone pressurising us to prioritise growth over continuity. Or pressurising us to sell the company to someone else.
Foundations (II): finance We self-finance. We have no bank loans and we don’t intend to have any. The same applies to factor invoicing. When we invest in growth – for example, by taking on additional staff – we finance it out of retained profit. We probably grow less quickly as a result – but we sleep better.
Obvious: cash (I) The minimum target balance for our current account is calculated as a ratio to our forecast expenditure. We believe (though we accept that this is difficult to evidence) that we do so on a rather more cautious basis than is typical of small businesses.
344-354 Less obvious: cash (II) We also operate a series of dedicated savings accounts to ensure that we have sufficient cash to cover forthcoming tax demands and specific contingencies (for example, rebate fees). The money we pay into such accounts is calculated, in each case, as a percentage of revenue. The more we grow, the more we put aside.
344-354 Postscript on cash We think that some business advisers would say that our savings strategy is over-engineered: they’d say that we should push the cash to more productive use. We see the logic -- but we’re in this business for the long haul.
Obvious: insurance We fulfil our legal obligations to have employer, indemnity, and liability insurance policies.
Less obvious: insurance Our insurance policies go beyond our legal obligations. For example, we also insure for such matters as personal accidents, cyber security, and commercial and legal issues.
Less obvious: operations When, as part of our talent acquisition service, we’re working on a role, we habitually ensure that at least two people (so not the account manager alone) have oversight – so, in the event of unexpected interruptions (such as illness) the client can be assured of continuity.
Obvious: compliance We believe that compliance with statutory obligations needs to be embedded in our DNA. From the top down we seek to instil an ethos of ‘If you’re not sure that it’s right, don’t do it’. When it comes to data, we’re registered with the Information Commissioner and…
Not entirely obvious: compliance (continued) …in the lead up to the launch of GDPR we, like many organisations, devoted time and resources to revising our systems, redesigning our privacy notice, and training our staff. But (less commonly, we suggest ) we have implemented processes that require us to obsess about GDPR over the long term, so that we continue to comply. Training in compliance on data management forms part of the induction of each recruit to the team.
Obvious: backing up We make extensive use of automatic back-ups of our databases and online communications.
Less obvious: strategy Our business development strategy focuses not only on the financial value of each account, but also: • The number of clients that we work for, so that we don’t become over-dependent on any one client; and • The diversity of clients: within our target market – that is, organisations for professional people – we seek to develop a range of clients (of various sizes, in various sectors) so that they are not all subject to the same risk factors.
Not at all obvious – original, even: the business environment We scan the business environment to seek to identify potential risks. Our review is based on the well-known PESTLE model (the acronym standing for political, economic, social, technological, legal, and ethical + environmental factors). To this we add a seventh consideration, namely IDEAS in general (yielding the acronym EPISTLE).
Less obvious: governance Many of the above measures are regularly reviewed at board level. For example: • Every board meeting reviews cash balances • There is an annual review of the continuity policy as a whole • The board’s review of the business environment, using our EPISTLE model, is also conducted at least annually.
Postscript: crisis management Each of the above measures contributes to resilience in the face of a crisis. In addition, we have developed a set of measures to deal with exceptional circumstances. A particular focus lies on ensuring that the business can continue to function in the absence of the Managing Director – for example, by ensuring that banking functions continue so that, for example, invoices and salaries can still be paid.
The mentality Continuity management is often conceived in defensive terms – something you have to do to stop things going wrong (or impacting too severely). From Year 1 of our business onwards, our approach has been both more enthusiastic and more imaginative than that. We asked, and have continued to ask, ‘How can we use this as a source of confidence?’ As a result, we’ve developed continuity planning as a theme that runs through all aspects of the business – not just the traditional risk management areas such as cash flow, insurance, and backing up of data, but also such areas as business development planning and appreciation of the context (or ‘business environment’) that we trade in.
